Valentina Irena Denzel

Valentina Irena Denzel

Valentina Denzel received her doctoral degree at Paris Diderot University (Paris 7) in comparative literature. Her primary field of research is seventeenth- and eighteenth-century French literature. In her book Les mille et un visages de la virago. Marfisa et Bradamante entre continuation et variation, Garnier Classique 2016, she analyzes the evolution of the representation of the woman warrior in French and Italian literatures from the Middle Ages to the Enlightenment by taking into consideration the political and historical context of this evolution and the symbolic value of the woman warrior in each specific time period. Her interest in gender identities, sexual orientation, and transgression of gender roles led her to study more in detail the philosophical and literary movement of 18th-century French libertinism that challenged intellectually and morally the normative thinking propagated by the Church. The work of the Marquis de Sade is a case in point, since he promotes gender identities that do not inscribe themselves into the binary system of female and male, but complicate concepts of sex, gender, and sexual orientation that are linked to transgressive power relations between his protagonists. Valentina’s second book project analyzes the representation of violence, gender, and pornography in Sade’s oeuvres, and its link to his own time period, as well as his legacy in popular cultures. More specifically, she will examine the Marquis de Sade’s impact on the punk and post-punk movements, as well as on punk-porn feminism and comic books. vdenzel@msu.edu

View the material that Valentina has curated for this website here.

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